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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

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In 1973, Ben Doller (previously Doyle) was born in Warsaw, New York. He completed his undergraduate education at the State University of New York at Oswego and West Virginia University.

His first collection of poetry, Radio, Radio, (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) was selected by Susan Howe for the 2000 Walt Whitman Award. He received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship. His second collection of poems, FAQ, was published in 2009 by Ahsahta Press. His third collection, Dead Ahead, was published by Fence Books in 2010.

Doller has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, West Virginia University, Denison University, and was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Boise State University in 2007.

He is co-editor of the Kuhl House Contemporary Poetry Series at the University of Iowa Press, and is vice editor and designer of 1913 a journal of forms and 1913 Press.

He lives in San Diego with his wife, the poet Sandra Doller (formerly Miller).

Parochial Poetry

Ben Doller

whiter I make it when walking right inunswerved, sweating fluorescent bleach,preaching a moon page that says its welts:learn this by heart is empty but do itto do it. I make it somehow whiter, zombiedand I opified allover the absolutelywhitest room. I say keep your lines in lineand look at me now just lining them,some flogged orthodoxen, plougheddown sillion shiny sacerdotal linesI'm supposed to like and looky I do.I like what I like. I just like what I like.I like to say look: dissident anachronistics,shambolic stuff in master rows but lookat me. I even early balded to enhancethe interrogation. I meander in and form moreorder. I like to point with my pointer, toindicate. The most afraid I like to get isa little bit. I app my accounts and surveythe advantage. I tower under.I oxiclean the ivory. I shower and shower.I dig on fonts. I wake up singing I saynever start with that but one morningI wake up singing the Fat Boys. I wikipedeThe Fat Boys. One of them is no longer.The other is no longer fat. I assess the Humanbeatbox via a Schwittersian optic.I exercise my massive rights. I have the rightto remain. I remain. I interview justlike a glacier. I hand dance. I like justwhat I like. My skin is white not. It fitsjust tight. It burns on will. My horizonis fungible. My will is like whatever.My SPF is infinity. People seem to likeme. I was just born just this way.

Ben Doller

by this poet

Lick the lights. Everyone
says that here. Sometimes
they'll call a spade a shovel,
hollowing half a hole,
which is all I have to sleep inside.
There's one
arboretum running
underground from near here
to Verisimilitude City.
I measure the macrocosm
with miles of mint string. Flossing
the dunning

When I bend back to gaze at the satellite convulsions, I
am an aqueduct for twilit rain. Quite literally I stand
in the littoral zone: a lens--no an aqueous humor, my
feet on the land below the high-water mark, my hand
a glazed waver: hello light-purple lights, hello red spots,
you've beaten the stars out

In the middle of every field,
obscured from the side by grass
or cornhusks, is a clearing where
she works burying swans alive
into the black earth. She only
buries their bodies, their wings.
She packs the dirt tight around
their noodle necks & they shake
like long eyelashes in a hurricane.
She makes me feed

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whiter I make it when walking right inunswerved, sweating fluorescent bleach,preaching a moon page that says its welts:learn this by heart is empty but do itto do it. I make it somehow whiter, zombiedand I opified allover the absolutelywhitest room. I say keep

whiter I make it when walking right inunswerved, sweating fluorescent bleach,preaching a moon page that says its welts:learn this by heart is empty but do itto do it. I make it somehow whiter, zombiedand I opified allover the absolutelywhitest room. I say keep

whiter I make it when walking right inunswerved, sweating fluorescent bleach,preaching a moon page that says its welts:learn this by heart is empty but do itto do it. I make it somehow whiter, zombiedand I opified allover the absolutelywhitest room. I say keep